


In this room for you and I.

by Rahn (Rahndom)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Angst War 2014, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1381129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahndom/pseuds/Rahn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this year's Angst War @ tumblr. </p><p>Damian hated him for still being here even when Robin had been taken from his hands. He hated his too pale eyes that seemed to understand him, he hated his whispery voice and the cold that always surrounded him. </p><p>As the years passed and the family fell apart around them, he learned to love him, and realized he could never live without him now. </p><p>If only they'd met under different circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this room for you and I.

He hates him.

He hates him so much he feels he is about to burst with fury whenever he sees him.

Whenever he hears his practically silent feet on the ancient carpeting, and when he sees his fingerprints faintly pressed against the polished mirrors.

A muted remainder that, despite having no place in their family any longer, Drake is still  _there._

“You are not needed here anymore,” he tells Drake one night as he finds the teenager comfortably sitting by the windowsill of the study, a book in his lap.

Drake turns moonlit eyes to him, wide and pale like the moon itself before a small, timid smile curls his lips – was he ever so pale? Drake is unfairly pale, unfairly perfect in his diminuteness – and he tilts his head to the right so his hair – the only dark feature of his – falls over his lashes.

“I think I am, actually,” the teen replies, shrugging his shoulders. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Damian growls, his hands clenching over the doorway where he is resting his meager weight.

“You think too highly of yourself then,” he scoffs. “Grayson and father already realized I was the superior choice to take the mantle, as you know.”

And the child knows he is mocking and vicious and childish in ways his father would disapprove of and his mother would consider below him, but the sight of that under-developed teenager so comfortable in the house that will one day be  _his_ makes his blood burn in ways he is not sure he wants to understand.  

Especially when Drake simply nods, his whole body relaxed, accepting.

“You have the R now, I know,” he whispers, his voice merely an echo in the night air. “And I also know you will do it justice, you just need to know it yourself.”

“I do know it!” Damian snaps, approaching Drake.

“You don’t believe it, though,” Tim replies, standing to put his book back in its place in the mantle. “Otherwise you wouldn’t need to seek me out.”

“I just want to make sure you know it too, Drake,” the child says, his eyes straying to the moonlit sky outside the window. “After all it would be quite unbecoming of you to remain here in hopes my father takes you back.”

Something broken and grey seems to pass through Drake’s already too pale blue eyes before he shrugs his shoulders and starts to walk out of the room.

“No, he won’t,” he agrees. “Not anymore.”

Damian stares, unable to come up with an appropriate response – and how is he supposed to respond when his opponent so easily admits his defeat.

“You should go to the cave,” Drake whispers as he too reaches the door. “Bruce is back from patrol and most likely will need assistance peeling the suit off, he tends to struggle when he bleeds too much into it.”

Damian wants to yell that he does not take orders from a reject like Drake, but the words seem to sink in his brain and the fact that his father must be losing blood as they speak clicks in his head and he dashes downstairs to the cave as fast as his legs can carry him.

It never occurs to him to question how can Drake know his father is injured.

Or why doesn’t he go and help him himself.

———

He receives another report from Grayson as he is arriving at the cave.

Apparently Nightwing is too important at the moment and there is no way he can go over there and cover for Father while he recovers because he can’t possibly leave his own post and he is so very sorry but Bruce is a big boy and a bout of drugged sleep for a day or two is actually something that would do the old chump good.

Damian crushes the comm in his fist as he notices the way Grayson’s eyes seem to stray from his own on the screen, how he does his best not to look at him as he speaks. How he tries and tries to avoid Damian’s face, his chest, the color of his cape.

Grayson never looks directly at him when he is in uniform.

Hasn’t done it for a year at the very least.

Damian wants to tell him that if the sight of him wearing the R is so offensive, he should not have given him the uniform himself, but he can’t, just as he couldn’t when it happened last week, and the week before that. He can tell Grayson is in agony whenever he calls, something Damian curses his inability to comprehend.

So he bites his tongue and replies he will simply have to split the usual patrol routes with Brown and maybe call Cain home so she can watch over Todd – although the man has been rather subdued himself these last few months – and maybe alert Kane for any eventuality.

Grayson nods, his eyes set on the cup of coffee he holds with both hands, a ridiculous hot-blue cup with the faded picture of a busty teenage girl and the legend: Wendy the Werewolf Stalker at the bottom.

It is a hideous thing but Grayson seems to treasure it.

They cut their conversation short when he hears his father moving up in the manor and he has been drugged, so he cannot be left to his own devices just yet.

He hurries up the stairs cursing the fact that Pennyworth is drugged himself – and what a time for Bruce Wayne to be attacked in his office instead of Batman, because that put their trusted ally in the line of fire as well – because he is not sure he can usher his father back to bed by himself if the man is in fact still dazedly wondering the halls.

“Fa-“ he begins, but stops when he catches sight of his father sullenly dragging his feet back to bed, his eyes half-lidded, pupils blown completely dilated, nose wrinkled childishly.

Drake is standing behind him, arms crossed over his chest as he follows him to the room.

“None of that,” the teen chides softly, an eyebrow raised to express his displeasure. “You won’t get better if you don’t take your meds and sleep and you know that.”

Damian’s Father looks at him over his broad shoulder, his bottom lip puffed into a pout.

“Not fair,” he hisses, his usually deep voice a raspy whine.

“Don’t care,” Drake rebuts cruelly. “Now take those meds and back to bed.”

Damian follows them as silently as he can as he watches his father collapse back in bed, his arms wrapping around his pillow as he buries his face on the fabric, breathing deeply into it.

“Bruce,” Drake says warningly. “Meds.”

Bruce emits a sound Damian never thought he would ever hear from the powerful man, a growl and a whine and a squeak all mixed in one as his blue eyes set on the teenager by his bedside.

“You will leave if I take the meds,” he hisses, fingers clenching and unclenching in his pillow.

Something sad and broken and old makes Drake’s face appear even paler than usual as he shakes his head.

“You won’t need me if you take them,” he says.

“I will always need you,” Damian’s Father snaps.

“No you don’t,” Drake sooths, his hand reaching to card Bruce’s dark hair back from his forehead. “You need to sleep and rest and get up and continue your path. You don’t need me for that.”

“I want to see you again,” Bruce complains, his hand tiredly trying to reach Drakes but falling uselessly to the side.

“You will,” Drake assures. “Now your meds.”

“Promise me,” Bruce insists, despite the fact that his hand is reaching to his bedside table and picking up the medicine Damian left there two hours ago.

“I’ll see you again when you are ready,” the teen nods. “I promise.”

Damian watches how his Father’s scowl deepens even as he puts the pills in his mouth and swallows them dry, falling face-first onto his pillow with a tired sigh.

“Night, Tim,” he hears the man whisper.

“Good night, Bruce,” Drake replies, his smile small. “It was so great talking to you again.”

Damian stands there, a silent vigil as his Father’s breathing grows even in sleep and Drake watches over him, never moving, never touching, never blinking. A silent statue of something fragile and broken and pale as the moonlight filtering in through the window.

He won’t catch his father and Drake interacting ever again.

Which, oddly enough, seems incredibly sad to him.

————

Over the following year Drake becomes a constant presence in his life that he is not sure he likes, yet knows it is his own fault.

The curiosity to visit the study always drives him to open the heavy oak door and pull the curtains back whenever he is stressed, angry, pushed.

And whenever he lets the moonlight slip into the study, Drake is revealed in his usual seat, a book in his lap, reading glasses perched at the edge of his nose.

Drake always stares at him with his pale moon eyes and tilts his head to the left.

“What happened?” he always asks, an opening that Damian learns over their meetings to take at face value as he unleashes violent diatribe after violent diatribe on the teenager and just knows for a fact that no word that leaves his lips will ever reach his father’s ears.

He is not sure how he knows, but he does.

He usually begins with the broader explanation:

Father doesn’t trust me.

Grayson refuses to look at me in the eye.

Todd skipped his medication again and decided he doesn’t want to wear the hood anymore.

Brown is planning to run away.

I can’t beat Cain in training and she is merciess.

And then he continues to rant and insult and curse and sometimes even scream until his lips are dry and his jaw hurts, until there is sweat in his temples and his toes are burnt from them rubbing on the carpet as he walks back and forth, hands in the air to illustrate his point further.

And during the whole thing Drake watches him, eyes focused, lips pursed.

Damian is ashamed because he can see those eyes following his every move, reading the hidden meanings of his words and translating them to the whole base issue that always brings him back to their room.

For all his faulting of his family, for all his complains, the bottom of it all can be resumed as always in two sentences.

_‘No one understand me, nor do their try.’_

And…

_‘I feel so lost and alone.’_

And Drake never says a word.

Never nods or shakes his head.

But his eyes that are almost never blue anymore seem to say all he needs to.

Because his eyes always say the same:

_‘I know and I’m sorry. I understand.’_

For there is nothing else either of them can do.

Damian needs to face his demons alone and they both know it.

Still he feels like he also needs this. He needs Drake’s solemn eyes on his as he blurts out all his worries, his sorrows to the night and he needs to rest his tired body on the couch by Drake’s side and enjoy the cooling breeze that the opened widow allows in that, joined by Drake’s presence, lulls him to sleep.

—————-

When he turns fifteen he decides to ask the question that has plagued him for the last two years.

“What do you read?” he asks as he plops by Drake on the couch, noting much to his satisfaction that he finally caught up to him in height – and a younger age as well, of course, thanks to his superior genes – and that Drake seems to have noticed it too. “Everytime I see you there is a book in your hands, I am curious.”

Drake – who over the years has turned into Timothy, but only inside Damian’s head, never outloud, he is not that pathetic – blinks at him before his cheeks flush a pale pink.

“The Harry Potter Saga,” he replies, his voice a whisper. “Dick bought it for me when I was your age but I never had the time to read it before…”

Damian wrinkles his nose.

“Grayson bought you books?” he asks, feeling something tighten in his chest at such revelation. Grayson has still to look at him in the eye, and his conversations are shorter every single week, as if his communications with Damian are more a tedious chore than genuine interest on his part.

Timothy nods, shaking his head.

“He decided one day that my reading material needed some books more age appropriate, so he had Alfred free a bookcase and started filling it up with teen-appropriate books,” he explains. “I just finished reading the Discworld Books last week and decided to try some Fantasy for a change.”

Damian remains silent as his eyes examine each and every one of the paperback books lovingly organized in the small bookcase. How each colored cover seems to be placed to recreate create a small, glossy rainbow that most likely made Grayson squeal in delight.

Drake seems to be the kind of person to do those kind of small things.

He somehow feels he should be jealous of Drake and the obvious affection Grayson seemed to have showered him with, but he knows Grayson never comes to Drake’s little study, never seems to ask about him or even call him when Damian knows the teen is in the house.

How he seems to avoid Drake’s room like the plague and maybe those two are still angry at eachother over the whole Robin debacle and they should really sit down and talk it out because if he could stop insulting Drake – no matter the many years of secret midnight rendezvous it took them – he is sure Grayson can pull his empty head out of his ass and do it too.

He doesn’t like the fact that Grayson forgot about them both.

That he left them all behind.

“Is it good?” he asks finally because he is not sure what else to say and he feels that the silence between them both will swallow Timothy up and drag him away forever. “This Harry Potter?”

Drake smiles his usual small smile that makes him glow.

“Not really sure yet, Harry is only eleven,” he replies, eyeing the pages in his hands.

Damian nods.

“Read to me?” he asks, getting comfortable in the cushions under him.

Timothy blinks, surprised,

“Please,” Damian adds, his cheeks flushing.

The other teen sighs, opening the book once more, one hand fixing his glasses.

“Chapter Six: The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters,” he began, as usual, his voice was only a whisper. “Harry’s last month with the Dursley’s wasn’t fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn’t stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn’t shut Harry in his cupboard…”

Damian closed his eyes and let Timothy’s soothing voice lull him to sleep and he spoke of magical steam engines and trolleys and an amazing amount of red-haired children like Colin and flying candles and adventures that seemed far too warm for their secluded corner of the world full of moonlight and icy breezes.

——-

Damian is sixteen when a miracle – or a curse, depending on who to ask – graces the manor in ways he had told himself would never happen again.

He returns home from school to find bullet holes on the walls and screams of voices he hasn’t heard in months echoing inside the ancient hallways.

He dodges a bullet just in time to see Todd dash past him, eyes wide and bloodshot, an animalistic snarl curling his mouth as he aims.

“JASON!” Grayson screams, his own face twisted in fury as he gives chase, his own weapons in his hands as he tries to incapacitate his opponent without actually killing him.

Damian instantly searches for his father, fearing the worst, only to find him sitting in the kitchen with Alfred, a glass of liquor in his hand, his eyes lost and broken and sad.

“Grayson and Todd are destroying the manor,” he says, trying to spur his father into action.

Bruce nods.

Pennyworth serves himself a cup of steaming tea as he rests his aged body on a chair, his own expression one of defeat.

Damian waits for a moment.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” he asks finally, hands clenched.

Bruce shakes his head.

“There’s nothing I can say that will make them stop,” he tells his son. “This is too personal to both.”

Damian curses under his breath – something Timothy taught him to do when he turned thirteen – because he hears their screams, their insults and rage, and the heavy creaking of the study’s oak doors.

The two entered Timothy’s room.

He dashes without thinking towards them, his only concern to stop them before they find Timothy, before they bring him into their ridiculous fight and maybe injure him, because Timothy has not been in the field in years, has not trained or fought, has not defended himself since Damian was ten.

When he arrives at the room Todd is clawing at Tim’s rainbow-organized bookcase, pulling the books onto the floor and digging into the wall with a hunting knife while Dick is kneeling in the carpet, his hands pressing against the fleshy part of this thigh as it bleeds into the carpet.

Damian feels horror at the sight.

“Let them fight,” Timothy whispers as he approaches him. “I think they need to get this out of their systems.”

Damian clenches his hands when Grayson doesn’t react at their presence, his eyes focused on Todd, but doesn’t dare to move in case Red Hood might focus his next target of violence on Timothy.

“They are destroying your study,” he reasons, his teeth sinking onto his lower lip.

Timothy nods.

“Jason wants to honor me in the only way he can,” he says softly. “Dick believes he is not worthy.”

“What?” Damian asks, shocked when he notices the tears rolling down Tim’s cheeks, contrasting with the sickly grey of his skin under the sunlight.

“My old costume,” Tim shrugs. “It used to be Jason’s and I think he wants it back.”

“But it’s yours,” the younger teen snaps. “He can’t have it!”

Tim looks at him, eyes heavy.

“I thought at first that you might take it when you were ready to leave the old R behind,” he admits, shaking his head. “But then again I think this is better, so you can continue on your way without being burdened by those that came before you.”

Damian shakes his head, shocked.

“It’s your costume, your own insignia,” he tries to argue, at the same time as Grayson struggles to his feet and holds a batarang in his hand.

“That’s Tim’s!” he screams, a hint of hysteria in his voice that makes it break painfully. “You have no right!”

“I have the right because I give a fuck and you don’t!” Todd replies, hands reaching to pull the aged wallpaper behind the bookcase. “You go along your merry way ignoring it all, pretending nothing happened! You’ve never even set foot here in years!”

“And you have!?” Dick screams back. “Why now, Jason! What could you possibly want to get now!”

“Hope!” Todd snaps. “If the people see him out…”

“They won’t see him out!” Dick interrupts. “They’ll never see him out again!! They’ll know it’s not him, it will never be him again!”

“And I’m supposed to what? Twiddle my thumbs and hide my head in the sand like you? Pretend he was never here?” Jason snarls, hands finally locking onto a wooden panel that Damian never realized it was there before and pulling with all his might until dust and cobwebs are dancing in the air between them.

“He’s actually going to take it,” Tim says, and his voice for once sounds impressed to Damian. “I thought he wouldn’t have the courage.”

A sigh escapes his lips as he turns to Damian, his smile so painfully melancholic that the younger teen wants to take a step back, a step forward, to run away from him and to envelop him in his arms to sooth his pain.

“I’m going to miss you so much, Damian,” he says finally, his slender hand reaching to card through Damian’s hair the same way he saw him do to his father all those years ago.

He is shocked when he doesn’t feel a thing other than the cooling night breeze he has grown used to against his temple.

“Timothy?” he whispers, eyes wide.

“I wish we could have met like this… before, you know?” the older teen continues, undeterred – and how come Damian just now realizes that Timothy has not changed at all since he met him at age ten? He should have aged like Grayson and Todd, he shouldn’t still be a teenager – as his tears continue to fall. “I forgive you, you know? I know you didn’t meant to.”

“Meant to…” Damian repeats, shaking his head. “I…”

Grayson lets out a scream that feels more like a release of pure agony, a wail into the air that appears to have been bottled inside his body for years now as he falls to his knees on the carpet, his hands reaching like claws  towards the destroyed bookcase and beyond, where Todd has cleared the stains of an immaculate class coffin like the ones on the cave.

Inside is the Red Robin uniform, perfect in every way.

As if taken just out of Damian’s memory.

Down to the gash on the side, where Timothy’s stomach should have been.

And the brown-ish stain of blood that dyes the red Kevlar.

The same one Damian put there in a fit of rage when he was ten years old.

“No…” he whispers, shaking his head.

“Yes,” Timothy whispers, his smile bitter. “They don’t know it was you, though, they thought it was Ra’s.”

Damian continues to shake his head even as Todd reaches into the case to remove the black gauntlets, revealing ivory boned hands, slender, perfect, artistic in every way.

Timothy’s hands are inside the case.

“No…” Damian whimpers, falling to his knees himself. “Why?”

Timothy’s skull is inside the cowl, his ribs are holding the bodice together, his hipbones hold his belt.

Timothy’s skeleton is inside their wall.

“They thought your grandfather did it,” Timothy shrugs, shaking his head. “Bruce decided to keep my corpse as far away from Ra’s’ reach as possible, so he wouldn’t use the Lazarus on me.”

Damian turns to him, eyes narrowed.

“You never told them the truth,” he demanded, feeling dread pool coldly inside of him as his body began to shake.

Timothy, his Timothy’s hands were fading, as were his feet when Todd took the boots away.

“Only you could see me,” he explained. “Plus, what good would it have made? You made a mistake and I understood that. I guess you never thought you had cut that deep, huh?”

He hadn’t.

He had thought Timothy would only need some stitches and would slink away for a few days so he could bond with his father in peace.

“No,” he whispered, hands reaching for his companion, his friend of so many years, only to pass through his cooling image. “Don’t, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Timothy whispered. “Tell everyone I love them and I don’t want them to mourn me anymore? Please?”

“You can’t,” Damian begs, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I love you, I love you, please don’t go.”

Timothy looks infinitely pained, even as he disappears to his waist and is slowly fading into nothing.

“I’m sorry… I—“

There are no more words, no more apologies from the one that Damian has learnt to love, to depend on and need like an anchor to the world.

Because Timothy is dead, has been dead for years, and yet…

“I love you,” he whispers as he feels the weight of his body become too much and he falls to the carpet. “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

Bruce will find them an hour later, as silence spreads over the manor once more – and the place has been so silent since Tim’s rap and rock disappeared from the air – his footsteps heavy, pained, for he is getting old, too old for these steps.

Dick is on his knees in the middle of the study Tim claimed as his own – the place where they buried him, away from everyone that could have ever done him harm – hands clinging to the wall, nails broken and bleeding as he most likely tried to calm his despair on the plaster and wood paneling.

He continues to sob even now, his voice broken, his throat raw as he calls Tim’s name and asks for forgiveness, for another chance.

Bruce feels sorry for him, for the last words he exchanged with Tim were a reprimand over his anger, over not getting over the fact he had chosen Damian. He had called Tim a child, an immature brat that didn’t want to let go of daddy’s cape.

They had found Tim dead in his apartment the following morning.

Jason is sitting on the floor amongst broken books and plaster, his arms wrapped tightly around the Red Robin cowl, his lips moving in a muted prayer, a request for forgiveness, for salvation, for protection that his successor – now predecessor can watch over him in death as he watched over him in life.

Finally Damian was curled on the doorway, his knees to his chest as he rocked back and forth, his eyes wide, his frame trembling.

An aged paperback book held tightly against his chest.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone.

“I’m sorry,” the boy whispered over and over. “I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, I love you… come back.”

Bruce feels himself stretched apart as he doesn’t know how to move, how his body feels too small and tight for the agony inside of him.

He wants to comfort his children, wrap his arms around them and sooth their tears as he did when they were only boys.

But he can’t.

He can’t reach to any of them when his own heart, his soul, is still wailing on the inside for the one that will never come back, the one that marched along with a tired smile and eyes made of moonlight.

So the Wayne family remains silent as they, for once, openly mourn the one they lost.


End file.
